February 1-7, 2010

Newsletter

February 07, 2010

Faculty News

Research News:

Prof. Jason Zara (ECE) has received a $28,473 contract from Imalux Corporation for a project entitled "Advanced Probes for Optical Coherence Tomography." The funds will support a doctoral student to conduct research in next generation technologies to improve Imalux's OCT scanning probes.

Conferences & Papers:

Prof. Lance Hoffman (CS) chaired a panel on "Cyberwar: Is Congress Preparing for the Common Defense?" on January 27th at the State of the Net Conference in Washington, DC.

Other News:

Prof. Jonathan Deason (EMSE), along with GW Solar Institute Director Ken Zweibel, presented an overview of EMSE energy related research to a gathering of key energy executives of the Lockheed Martin Corporation on January 13th. The meeting was arranged by the GW Solar Institute.

Prof. Guru Venkataramani (ECE) has been chosen to serve as publications chair for the 43rd IEEE International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO-43). This is a premium forum for the computer architecture community to present, discuss, and debate new and innovative microarchitecture ideas and techniques for advanced computing and communication systems. The conference will be held in Atlanta, GA, December 4-8, 2010.

Prof. Jason Zara (ECE) gave an invited talk, entitled "Tools for the Detection of Epithelial Cancers with Optical Coherence Tomography," to the National Capital Section of the Optical Society of America on January 19th.

Other News

Scholarship opportunity: Current SEAS graduate students and current SEAS undergraduate seniors who will be graduate students here next year are potentially eligible for the Hyundai Scholarship. The application deadline is February 12th. The purpose of the scholarship is to enable South Korean and American scholars to pursue advanced degrees in specific fields of business administration, management science, and engineering. Awards are made annually to both South Korean and U.S. citizens. Interested applicants must be students in SEAS or the School of Business. Please visit the Hyundai Scholarshipwebsite for more information on eligibility and the application process. The award includes full tuition (fees excluded) for one academic year.

Scholarship opportunity: The application period for Computer Security and Information Assurance full scholarships for U.S. citizens is now open. (Rising) juniors, seniors, and graduate students are eligible. This year's forms and information are up the web at http://www.seas.gwu.edu/cybercorps/. The application deadline is February 1st.

Graduate Research Assistantship: Prof. Alex Li (ECE) is seeking a graduate student who is interested in research in computer architecture. The ideal candidate would have good knowledge of modern superscalar and multicore microprocessor architectures. The research project involves in-depth investigation and analysis of future parallel computer architectures and/or reliability of future billion-transistor microprocessors. Essential requirements include C/C++ programming knowledge, experience in the use of architecture simulators, and strong analytical/critical thinking skills. In addition, the preferred candidate would have knowledge in OS, compiler, and/or programming languages. One expected outcome of the research project is publications in top-tier conferences and journals in computer architecture. Priority will be given to doctoral students. Interested students should contact Prof. Alex Li, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: at alexli@gwu.edu or (202) 994-7175.

VSTC ECE Team: The accelerated cohort program offered by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Virginia Science and Technology Campus continues to see an annual increase in student enrollment. This is due in large part to the “VSTC ECE Team”. For almost four years, the “VSTC ECE Team,” comprised of Dr. David Smith, director and faculty advisor; Carmen Session, senior education and marketing specialist; and John Pistole, executive coordinator, have ensured that this program continues to meet its goal. The 10-course, 30-credit hour master’s program in either electrical engineering or telecommunications and computers, is a Saturday-based accelerated cohort program. The success of the program can be attributed to, among other things, the accessibility of the ECE Team, as well as its willingness to go above and beyond what is required to make certain each student has a memorable and enjoyable experience at GW.

Guest Vignette

The problems of communication and data protection have two divergent goals. The communication theorist strives to transmit information in the presence of noise. The cryptographer's aim, on the other hand, is to prevent the adversary from obtaining any information at all. These problems are, however, also two sides of the same coin. Both problems were first formalized by Claude Shannon in seminal papers about a year apart. After more than half a century of largely independent growth, there is great interest today in how one field can contribute to the other.

Prof. Poorvi Vora of the Computer Science Department has been using the tools of communication theory for research on problems in security and privacy. In the problems of block-cipher cryptography and statistical database privacy, she has shown that an efficient adversary behaves as a coding theorist communicating over a very noisy channel. Efficient attacks correspond to error-correcting codes. This observation has led to previously unknown limits on attack efficiency. In the problem of voting system design, her doctoral student Ben Hosp has proposed an information-theoretic framework to evaluate voting systems, and successfully applied it to compare existing voting system proposals.

Additionally, solutions obtained using game-theoretic approaches also shine light on the information-theoretic nature of security and privacy problems. With Prof. Sumit Joshi of the Economics Department at GW, Prof. Vora has studied auctions where bidders know that the seller may use the bid to price the object higher. (A variant of this type of seller is observed on eBay, and was studied by Prof. Vora's doctoral student Yu-An Sun---now at Xerox Research). This is seen as a privacy problem because the seller uses information in the bid to change the rules of the game to the disadvantage of the bidder. Using a game-theoretic approach, Profs. Joshi and Vora obtain the optimal strategy for bidders, which is most simply explained in information-theoretic terms as follows. The bidder's strategy is to reduce the information contained in the bid by quantizing it. The number of quantization intervals appears to depend on the probability with which the seller tries to cheat the bidder (this is work in progress). There is no getting away from information theory! (Provided courtesy of Prof. Poorvi Vora of the Department of Computer Science)

CS Colloquium: “Technical Publications in the Age of Social Networking: The periodicals of the Computer Society”
Speaker: Prof. David Grier, GW Elliot School of International Affairs
Monday, March 8th at 4:00 pm
736 Phillips Hall

Sponsored by the GW School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Engineer Alumni Association.

SEAS Seminar Series in Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century:

SEAS continues the seminar series it initiated last semester with more discussions on engineering challenges facing us. More information will soon be available. In the meantime, please mark your calendars for the following dates:

SEAS Career Services Events:

Sponsored by E-Council, this event is exclusively for SEAS students. Students will meet with representatives from various engineering and IT organizations to discuss their career plans, network and learn about internships and jobs.